Phantasmagorians
The Phantasmagorians, also known as the Phantasmagi '''or simply the '''Ghost-Eaters, are a cabal of Dark Mechanicus native to the Cancridrean Periphery. Originating from a splinter faction of the Gilgamesh Tech-Cult thought lost during the Revanchist Initiative, these former Omnissian acolytes inadvertently stumbled upon the Inquisitorial caché Enkidu whilst plumbing the depths of The Outer Dark, and were subsequently corrupted by the dread artifacts held within. Taking their name from the heretical text known as the Formulae Phantasmagoria, the Phantasmagorians have become what in another age might have been labeled necromancers, raisers of the dead that barter souls like currency, all in the name of truly quantifying the ephemeral nature of death, the soul, and the Warp itself. History The Oldest Question The true origins of the Phantasmagorians were conceived light-years away from the Periphery or indeed the entire Niero Sector, on the far-away planet of Tanserbel, near the beating heart of the entire Segmentum Ultima. Sometimes called the Sophist's Paradise, Tanserbel was a Garden World given over to great academia with the express purpose of educating the children of the Segmentum's elite. Indeed, the entire planet's economy was essentially based upon its services rendered as one massive university, where for exorbitant fees the privileged elite could be tutored in subjects both mundane and exotic, all while taking in the splendor of Tanserbel's majestic Cloudpiercer mountains and pristine alpine groves. In was within the walls of these continent-spanning bibliocathedrals that the dread text that would come to be known as the Formulae Phantasmagoria was penned. However, its author was no Chaos facilitator or power-hungry cultist, but rather a young but esteemed philosopher and lecturer by the name of Augustine Dredger, whose only true sin was curiosity. Driven by his own intellectual ambition, a passing interest in the occult, and a profound misunderstanding of the dangers posed, Dredger sought to find a definitive answer to an age-old question: "what happens when we die?" Using his not-inconsiderable influence he gained access to Tanserbel's most venerable libraries and infostacks in search of his answer, spending hours pouring through moldering old tomes and treatises of dubious origins thought long forgotten within the scholam's dusty archives. Any useful factoids or intriguing information he compiled he stored within a private journal, the proto-draft of what would eventually become the Formulae, whose contents grew larger and more arcane with each passing year. By 847.M39, Dredger had become so confident in his unorthodox studies that he submitted the creation of a new curriculum to the panscholarly registrar: "Theoretical Thanatology", a branch of philosophical study that verged dangerously close to open discussion of the Warp and its functions. The situation soon escalated as some of his fellow academics began to show interest. Some were intrigued by the esoteric nature of Thanatology, some simply hoped to bask in the glow of Dredgers' newfound fame, but either way, they began to orchestrate similar courses. Soon, Dredger found himself at the head of the loosely-aligned cadre of spiritualists and metaphysicists, his Thanatologists, whose pooled knowledge further added to the already copious amounts of enigmatic lore held within the Formulae Phantasmagoria. It is unknown whether or not the Thanatologist faction's morbid fascination with the Immaterium would have seen them devolve into true acolytes of the Ruinous Powers, for by the time their numbers truly swelled, the Archdeans of Tanserbel had already contacted the Emperor's Inquisition. Whisperings of a strange and influential group of occultists had reached their ears, and so in a purely political move sought to fan the flames of rumored heresy so that their own rule over the academia grouds would remain uncontested. What the naive Archdeans failed to realize was that the Inquisition did nothing by half, and they were no man's tool. The investigation led under the auspices of the Xanthite Inquisitor Ketos Kai Yspos saw the Thanatologists' "studies" decried as outright daemonology. Augustine Dredger and all his fellows were dragged from their beds by black-clad Stormtroopers and executed via firing squad in the central campus square for all faculty to see. Worse still, Yspos ordered that all copies of the Formulae Phantasmagoria and the irreplaceable libraries worth of texts that had spawned it be burned to cinders. Then he left as suddenly as he came, taking with him the original Formulae ''and leaving nothing but ash in his wake. The scandal alone devastated Tanserbel, noble families across the Sector withdrawing both their children and their support, both politically and financially. Funding soon dried up and by 849.M39 those who were not charged with heresy via association were forced to abandon their classrooms and seek employment elsewhere. As if to add insult to injury, eventually the Sophist's Paradise was repurposed as an Agri-World by the Adeptus Administratum in 890.M39, buildings once home to hundreds of years worth of scholarly tradition repurposed into wheat mills and processing plants. As for the ''Formulae, it remained in the possession of Inquisitor Yspos until his untimely death at the hands of the criminal Ruby Banner Brotherhood, wherein it passed down to the safekeeping of his most senior Interrogator, one Wolfram Beyale. Blacksite Enkidu Nearly a century later and after a long and fruitful career in service to the Ordo Hereticus, Wolfram Beyale marked his ascension to the vaunted station of Lord Inquisitor with an immediate transfer to the offices of the Ordo Xenos. The logic behind this decision was obvious: among witchunters, the student of a known radical like Yspos would find his every move scrutinized and studied by his rivals, no matter how high his rank. Yet despite this, Beyale kept the Formulae Phantasmagoria ''in his possession, though his reasoning for this, like so many other things about the man, was unknown. Nevertheless, the damning legacy of Augustine Dredger remained in his care until well after the start of the fateful Cancridrae Xenocide, and his subsequent formation of the Inquisitorial Cancridrean High Conclave. Well into the Crusade's first years, Warmaster Aloysius van Dragen's was nearly slain in a surprise attack orchestrated by the Amphra of Clutch Gloomdepth and their puppets, the xenophile Caebolg family. In an effort prevent further infiltration the Conclave mobilized a massive clandestine purge of Imperial ranks, both civilian and military, codenamed ''Operation Privateer. The Inquisitor's combined efforts resulted in a secondary shadow war that left the Caebolgs shattered and destitute but also left the Conclave with a seized stockpile of Amphra technologies, dangerous artifacts scavenged from the Outer Dark, and other, stranger devices that defied classification. With no safe way to dispose of this deadly bounty, it was Beyale who suggested the creation of a temporary storehouse so that the artifacts might be kept away from prying eyes until a more permanent solution might be found. In a show of advocacy this project, he offered up the Formulae Phantasmagoria, his last and only keepsake from his late mentor, to be added to the storehouse's contents. Thus with the aid of the ambitious Magos Antiochus, the Mechanicum's foremost representative within the Cancridrean Crusade, the Conclave scoured the fringes of the Cancridrae Sub-Sector for a suitable locale. Eventually, the joint expedition stumbled upon a wandering planetoid, its bulk composed of pure darksilver, a rare mineral whose natural anti-aetheric qualities rendered it all but invisible to the light of the Astronomican. Dubbing it "Enkidu", Antiochus' excavator teams set to work, mind-scrubbed servitors working tirelessly to hollow out this cosmic afterbirth and install labyrinthian networks of warded vaults, strongpoints, and auto-defenses. Shortly after, the Conclaves' cargo of heretical trinkets, Formulae ''included, were delivered to the new Blacksite via bulk-loader. All those complicit in Enkidu's creation were sworn to secrecy on pain of death, the caché itself sealed and all record of its coordinates deleted, awaiting the day when its masters would return to rid it of its malefic burden. That day never came. The Xenocide ended just as abruptly as it had begun, and with it ended the Cancridrean High Conclave. The only members of the original conspiracy that did not retreat back into the Imperium's heartlands were Magos Antiochus, who stayed behind to drag some semblance of victory out of the ashes of defeat, and Beyale himself. Asserting dominance over the gleaming Hives of Descillion through his own blood-claim, the Lord Inquisitor maintained his vigil over the newly-founded Periphery for many years before eventually passing on, not on a bloody battlefield or in some shadowed back-alley, but in his own bed. All the while, Enkidu continued to drift aimlessly through the uncaring void, just another remnant of a failed war. Rediscovery In 196.M40 Magos Eldren Symonsson, a high-standing member of Forge Gilgamesh, departed to the Outer Dark with a cadre of fellow Tech-Priests onboard the ''Lunar-Class cruiser Gestalt. On record, the stated purpose of Symonsson's expedition was to survey the stellar quadrant near Edensgate for potential asteroid mining sites. However, the Magos' true goal was far less altruistic in nature. Symonsson had been one of the original members of Magos Antiochus' Taghmata come the formative days of the Cancridrae Xenocide, but rather than returning to civilized space, his erstwhile compatriot had chosen to establish himself in what he considered a desolate backwater unfit for the Machine God's grace. Worse still, the Lords of Mars had actually legitimized Antiochus' actions by giving him leave to found his own Forge World, stranding Symonsson in the Periphery. He now sought a means to at least grant himself a measure of autonomy so that he could finally return to civilized space, and now sped through the void towards the potential realization of that goal. Weeks earlier during his oversight of a routine viral purge of Forge Gilgamesh's central cogitation unit, the holy Omniplexus, Symonsson stumbled upon a seemingly out-of-place record lost amid the data-matrices. It was a delivery entry, code-fragmented but still legible, detailing the transport of high-end contruction units to an unspecified location somewhere past the edge of colonized space, referred to only as "Enkidu". The Magos' interest was piqued: what was so precious that Antiochus, for who else could have ordered the deletion, would go to such great lengths to hide it? Fabricating the mining survey mission to deflect suspicions, he and a crew of loyal followers set out to investigate personally. It was Symonsson's hope that material evidence of subterfuge on his master's part, whatever it might be, would cast doubt upon Antiochus' reputation to the point where he could petition the Red Planet for an immediate transfer. It mattered not if the record he uncovered was merely a glitch, either way, he would lose nothing. It was well after their arrival in the Outer Dark that the Gestalt's Astropath finally reported to Symonsson an anomaly, like a gaping hole in his psychic perception. Zeroing in on this strange absence, the Magos and his crew arrived at the long-forgotten Blacksite, much to their collective shock. to follow At Present Cult and Culture To those who are aware of the Phantasmagorian's existence, it is a common misconception that they, like so many other cults and claves of corrupted Mechanicum, worship Chaos. This is entirely not the case. True, their chosen work brings them close to the Ruinous Powers, skirting the delicate knife-edge between Materium and Immaterium, but the Dark Magi of Enkidu see it and its promises as neither divine elysium nor hellish underworld. Rather, the warp to them is simply a natural facet of the universe, as elemental yet commonplace as concepts such as space, time, or gravity. The warp may indeed hold myriad dangers and wonders, but in their cold, discerning eyes the same could be said of realspace. Ultimately, their fascination lies not in the powers that dwell within the Immaterium but rather humanity's relationship to it, that strange collective unconscious that may just prove the existence of a true afterlife. If the Phantasmagi worship anything, it is the human soul, the fount of all creativity and inspiration. It is what makes every living organism unique, yet it unlike the body or the mind has never been truly quantified. The Phantasmagorians seek to do just that, dissect the spirit, rendering it down to its most base components in their ceaseless quest to understand its transition from this life to the next. Naturally, this entails that most of their experiments be performed on the recently dead or dying, only adding to their macabre reputation and leading to many unsavory rumors in and around the fringes of the Periphery as to just why these dark-robed Tech-Priests pay so handsomely for unspoiled cadavers. to follow Recruitment Structure, Hierarchy, and Servants Leadership Dark Magi Combat Units Troops Elites Heavy Support Fast Attack Technologies Weaponry Black Alchemistry Dread Artifice Relations Quotes Category:Dark Mechanicum Category:The Periphery Category:Organizations